www.Borges: On "the two kings and their two labyrinths"

To read Borges' short story "The Two Kings and Their Two Labyrinths" is to enter a labyrinth, to become entrapped in a parable of consciousness. Not only is the content of the story, particularly its end, shocking; the process of following it entangles the reader in a combination of intellectual perplexity and strong emotional response. The reader is forced to make a concerted effort to decipher a text, which ultimately declares itself undecipherable. A sense of frustration is built into the interpretive enterprise in which the reader is tempted to engage. Unlike the happy exit out of a maze in a royal court garden, at the end of Borges' story we are left with the anxiety of being imprisoned in the cage of consciousness and language.